How many of us take the time to relive half a lifetime’s worth of happy memories, cringeworthy failures, and unforgettable adventures together? How many of us get a chance to sit down and talk about the rough times we overcame in the past or to laugh about the stupid mistakes we made when we were young?

~ Joanna Gaines

Joanna Gaines Memoir Writing Memories

Truth is the lie you once told returning to haunt you

~ Dermot Healy

Dermot Healy Dermot Healy Lies Memoir Writing The Bend For Home Truth

An author’s operating charter is to unearth embedded symbols that reflect complementary and inconsistent relationships of our collective assemblage, combine harmonizing and contradictory conceptions that motivate us, and delve larger truths out of variable and erratic elements of human nature.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Kilroy J. Oldster Artistic Artistic Creativity Artistic Endeavor Artistic Expression Artistic Inspiration Artistic Passion Artistic Process Artistic Vision Author Authors Autobiography Human Nature Journey Of Becoming Journey Of Self Discovery Journey Of The Mind Journey Of The Soul Journey Of Your Life Memoir Memoir Writing Narrative Writing Self Discovery Self Truth Story Of A Soul Story Of Life Story Of My Life Story Of Your Life Writers On Thinking Writers On Writing Writers On Writing Books Writers Voice Writing Writing Philosophy Writing Process

Storytelling is an ancient art. The lucent vibes of stories express what we cannot articulate directly. When we hear someone’s story, we respond to the spark of humanness within ourselves that seeks to come out in the light and greet the world. When we tell the stories of our lives, we give voice to people bereft of speech, we make the persons whom we love or loved immortal, and we pass along our familiarity with the natural and physical world.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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Every human being carries with them the stories of their ancestors, the story of their generation, and the rudiments of pliable clay to build future storylines that will shape their community of kindred souls. Storytelling unites us as a species and supplies texture to our lives. By listening to other people’s stories and by sharing our personal story, we deftly weave the threads that compose the sacred hoop of the tribe.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Kilroy J. Oldster Autobiography Memoir Memoir Writing Stories Stories Of People Storytelling Writers On Writing Writing Writing Philosophy

It is important to measure ourselves at least once in life, undertake a personal odyssey that constructs a clarifying prism of our being.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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We must carefully cultivate the voice that speaks to us because an internal voice is the ultimate narrator of our charming and delightful personal story or the documentarian of our tragic and disgraceful plotlines. Stories that we tell ourselves become our functional reality, which format structures the concourse of the nested emotional control panel that guides and girds us through the din of the present.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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Writing places a person in the community of those imaginative spirits whom preceded their birth. Writing also connects a person with the intrepid spirits whom share the present as well as with those souls whom are not yet born.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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Human souls enfold the elemental elements that we configure to provide our own distinctive explanation of what it means to be alive. By opening our hearts and minds, by engaging in intuitive self-exploration, by telling our life stories full of prejudices and mindboggling idiosyncrasies, and by listening to the multivariate stories of our brethren, we add a ray of light to the spiraling consciousness of humankind.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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We write our life stories detailing our worldly experiences in order to expose the unconscious mind to the world of conscious appreciation. By extending our consciousness, we bring material insights to our emotional forefront. Words lay the foundation for truth telling. The music of our words allows us to train the lightness of language upon the darkness of our own humanity. The taxonomy of the human mind empowers us to employ the magic of language to share information, suggest action, speculate upon the future, reminisce about pastimes, lance our most ragged feelings, and pontificate, with a drunkard’s sense of punchy assuredness, upon any topic that fits our fancy. We tell stories in order to mark our existence, to share both our triumphs and failures, and teach wisdom gained from our previous skirmishes in a convoluted world. In absence of our stories, we do not exist in our own minds or in the minds of our people.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Kilroy J. Oldster Memoir Memoir Writing Storytelling Writing Writing Process

Sharing our personal stories makes us grateful for experiencing the radiance of being alive. Writing our personal stories documenting our vivid encounters with the larger world and examining our own time-tested ideas shapes the conception of our own being.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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Storytelling entails weaving a narrative out of the disturbing, strange, inspirational, and unremarkable detritus of life. By picking among the litter of our personal experiences to select evocative anecdotes to weave into a narrative format, we reveal which of life’s legendary offerings prove the most sublime to us. Acts of omission are momentous. Our narration of personal sketches divulge what factoids inspire us or do not stir us into action, or contain obdurate truths that prove virtually impossible to crack.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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Even now, I am anxious about the naked thoughts that I have shared. The observations are blisteringly honest and of course they have to be.

~ John Conrad

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When writing a comprehensive self-investigatory scroll, the writer attempts to weave a network of strands capable of enmeshing all sizes of ideas including those with no obvious interconnection. The writer must also trace all lingering thoughts to their original source in personal experiences, and revaluate each exquisite nuance notched into a person’s conscious mind including acts of depravity, violence, and the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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The ride back to Kathmandu was comfortable and relaxing. There were more overturned trucks (the gas-powered ones seem to tip the most often, I’m surprised there weren’t more explosions), goats being herded across the highway by ancient women, children playing games in traffic, private cars and buses alike pulling over in the most inconvenient places for a picnic or public bath, and best of all the suicidal overtaking maneuvers (or what we would call ‘passing’) by our bus and others while going downhill at incredible speeds or around hairpin turns uphill with absolutely no power left to actually get around the other vehicle.

~ Jennifer S. Alderson

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Always remember that your memoir is never about you. It's about your reader. At it's core, it's about that shared space where we all experience the timeless truths of what it means to be human.

~ Jerry Payne

Jerry Payne Memoir Memoir Writing Writing Writing Advice

Pain engraves a deeper memory.

~ Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton Memoir Memoir Writing Writing Writing Life Writing Process Creative

The analytical framework of this comprehensive field study of what it means to be an American examines how a person’s personality, culture, technology, occupational and recreational activities affect a person’s sense of purposefulness and happiness. The text evaluates the nature of human existence, formation of human social relations, and methods of communication from various philosophic and cultural perspectives. The ultimate goal is to employ the author’s own mind and personal experiences as a filter to quantify what it means to live and die as a thinking and reflective person.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Kilroy J. Oldster Memoir Writing Memoirs Narrative Non Fiction Personal Essay Writing Life

Writing reflects life and life is a mystery. All any of us can do is press the fleet footed beauty of life close to our flesh and use whatever instruments are within our grasp to express the evanescent spark of mysticism that resides within us.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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